Weekly Oricon Rankings (Ending 10-27)

The top single for the past week was KinKi Kids’ “Mada Namida ni Naranai Kanashimi ga/Koi wa Nioeto Chirinuru wo” (I hope I got that right) which sold 178,348 copies. I think that’s the pair’s best first week result since “Secret Code” in 2008, but I’m missing some information. Anyway, it’s certainly an excellent showing, and continued evidence of KinKi Kids’ phenomenal longevity and consistency.

“Kakumei Dualism” from Mizuki Nana-san and T.M. Revolution took #2, selling a decent 80,775 copies. That’s not as good as their previous collaboration, but nothing to sneeze at.

Apparently EXILE decided to do a re-release of “EXILE PRIDE ~Konna Sekai wo Koisuru Tame~” less than six months after its original release. That boosted it from #105 to #3 as they managed to distribute 52,579 additional copies to bring the single’s total . . . to bring the single’s total to 991,608. Of course, they did this just to annoy me, and I’m not going to take it anymore! They clearly want to force their way to a million seller by whatever means necessary, but this is the last time I’m going to mention this blasted single. Sorry, EXILE fans, but I’m no longer tracking this puppy – I’m going to close my eyes and hum loudly as it crosses into seven digit territory.

At #4, Nishino Kana-san’s “Sayonara” saw 22,820 copies sold.

RADWIMPS‘ “Gogatsu no Hae/Last Virgin” had a very strong second week, taking #6 by selling 10,816 copies to bring its total to 54,110.

Right behind at #7, 2PM’s “Winter Games” now has a two-week total of 119,015.

“Halloween Party” by the collaboration group Halloween Junky Orchestra continued its re-release pop a year after its first release, taking #9 with a new total of 132,451.

Sound Horizon’s “Halloween to Yoru no Monogatari” actually gained two spots, moving from #14 to #12 with a very strong 6,155 copies added in its third week to get its total to 59,890. That’s a better than 10% third week – many singles can’t even do ten percent of first week sales in their second week.

Taking #14 in its second week, “Birthday wedding” from Kashiwagi Yuki-san sold 5,230 for a total of 70,606 copies sold.

“Bye Bye Dubai ~See you again~/A My Girl Friend” from Sexy Zone was at #17, now boasting a three-week total of 159,857.

Three -48 family groups were present in the top 30. AKB48’s “Koisuru Fortune Cookie” took #19 and has a ten-week total of 1,460,556. NMB48 held #23 with “Kamonegikkusu”, which has a four-week total of 392,819. Popping back up from #58 to #27, SKE48’s “Utsukushii Inazuma” has sold 653,657 copies in fifteen weeks.

In the midst of all that at #24, E-girls’ “Gomennasai no Kissing You” sold 3,376 copies and now has a four-week total of 86,799.

In the album rankings, Arashi took the top spot with “LOVE” selling 670,288. That’s in-line with their trend since “Boku no Miteiru Fukei”.

At #2 and #3 were Saitou Kazuyoshi-san’s albums “Saitou” and “Kazuyoshi”, which sold 32,441 and 28,752 copies respectively in their first week.

Kanjani8’s “JUKE BOX” took #4, selling a somewhat weak 25,669 to bring its total to 348,626. Of course, since my initial expectation was 250-290k in the first week and therefore 275k-320k by the second week, the album is still doing great.

And . . . that’s it. None of the other albums in the top 10 are likely to sell more than 50k before they leave the top ten.

4 Comments:

All right – it’s time for the (once again) weekly Ryusenkai Report! This week’s charts are … half interesting I suppose, but first there are just a pair of notes that I want to make. Firstly, I believe that Arashi’s “LOVE” is the first album of theirs to have over 700,000 copies sold first week on Soundscan since “Boku no Miteiru Fukei” – just a bit of an interesting fact to note. Nonetheless, it’s the other note that I’m really excited about – and that a lot of people from Japan seem to be excited about. It’s been a long time, but at last, at the final show of their WILLPOLIS tour this past Tuesday, BUMP OF CHICKEN announced that they’re going to be releasing their 7th studio album, titled “RAY” at the end of January. The album will consist of 13 tracks, including the 6 that they released this era (Tomodachi no Uta, Smile, Zero, Good Luck, firefly, and Niji wo Matsu Hito), as well as a new song titled “ray” that they played live at their Budokan shows for the first time. Come the release window, it’ll have been right around 3 years and 1 month since Bump released “COSMONAUT” – a good long time, and I’m really psyched to finally be getting new material from them. Given that each and every one of the songs they’ve put out has been strong this era, I have a lot of hope that this album will be good – hopefully surpassing their previous effort. Now then, onto the Report!

Firstly, singles. Though I doubt this is any surprise, AKB48’s “Heart Ereki” has easily taken the #1 spot with 1,136,313 copies sold thus far this week. Nothing particularly new that I haven’t touched on before to talk about here. At #2 is likely to be Sandaime J-Soul Brothers with their new winter ballad, “Fuyu Monogatari”, which has sold right around 60,000 copies thus far. I’m going to give the #3 spot this week to pop duo ClariS, whose new single “Colorful” has sold right around what I suspect to be 28,000 copies up to this point this week. Plus, they’re very consistent, so I expect them to at least cross 40k, if not 50k before the week is finished. There’s nothing else that I find particularly interesting single-wise this week, but they’re fairly strong sales-wise at the top, all things considered.

Now … albums. I knew this was coming, and I’m still somewhat bummed that this is such a bad week. At #1 is Arashi’s “LOVE”, which has sold 41,402 copies sold up to this point this week. This is almost certainly going to end up being a weaker second week than “Popcorn” had, which furthers my belief that this album is going to have a shorter life span in the long run. LiSA’s “Landspace” is at #2 with 12,526 copies sold in its first three days on the shelf. It looks like she’ll improve on the sales of her first album, so good for her. At #3 (and I’m quite happy about this) is KANA-BOON, whose debut set, “DOPPEL”, has sold 11,985 copies thus far this week. For a newly signed band? Those sales aren’t bad at all, and it looks like they’ll land a Top 3 position for their first effort (which is good), so good for them. Beyond this though, the only other interesting album I can think of this week that’s releasing is Kaela Kimura’s “ROCK” (which you mistakenly gave a November release date in the other thread, which I forgot to mention there -_-). Overall, not a great week though.

Now, music suggestions! This week is going to be a bit weird, so bear with me. Firstly, we’re going to start with my belated tribute to Halloween: SEKAI NO OWARI’s “Death Disco”. I feel that this song captures the more breathless, oppressive nature of the holiday, rather than the more usual funny, happy-go-lucky approach. Nonetheless, enjoy!

Next, we’re going to take a trip down a considerably different and more light-hearted path with geek sleep sheep’s “hitsuji”. This is a new band which has some fairly well known members (the drummer from L’arc~en~ciel and the female singer from Rin Toshite Sigure). I honestly don’t know why I like this, but I just do, and I felt the need to share it – so I will.

Last, but certainly not least, we’re going to return to Yuzu in order to take a look at the other A-side on their new single, “Mamotte Agetai”. This song … is an absolutely beautiful and very sentimental ballad, and the PV for it is so ridiculously cute that it’s just infectious (I also recommend checking out the PV for the song that I gave you last week, “Ame Nochi Hallelujah”, as it’s on the same youtube channel and is also really good). Yuzu just never seems to disappoint.

Thus, another week, and another Ryusenkai Report, has come to an end. I hope that you enjoyed any insights and news that I had, and please let me know what you think of the song suggestions!

Ah, Soundscan – always providing an interesting alternative take on the numbers.

Somehow I knew your announcement would be a BUMP OF CHICKEN album – just stood to reason. But only thirteen tracks? Sure, there’s still a good chunk of new material, but I wonder if it’ll be enough to give the album a unique character in the same way we saw with their previous two studio albums. At least we now know when we’ll get to find out.

Looks like the singles are all shaping up as expected – no big surprises.

“Popcorn” was more about unbridled fun and energy, like the title suggests. “LOVE” . . . well, I guess they warned us right in the title that it has a different temper to it, and while the core Arashi fans still bought it (and while I haven’t listened to the whole thing, I love the first song), I think “Popcorn” offered more excitement to a broader audience.

The Kimura Kaela album is an odd case – CD Japan has the Limited Edition Type A being released on November 13th, even though the other two editions are being released on October 30th. If that’s right, the album should still get a bump on the week of the 13th, but I have no idea what’s going on there. I’ll keep it listed just in case.

Weird is good.

Sekai no Owari’s “Death Disco” isn’t really my style, and saying that it captures the darker side of the holiday . . . it sounded pretty light and ephemeral to me – at least musically. Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” this was not. The problem is the repetition in the song, which doesn’t really take the listener’s breath away. It might seem a bit oppressive in its monotony, but not much more. I’m going to rule it not weird enough.

“Hitsuji” gets me with the opening riff and a solid rock follow-through, but I feel like they waited too many bars before coming in with the vocals. As for the vocals – I have trouble with high-pitched and thin voices, but as long as the group doesn’t always sing like this, I can deal with it for one song. The piece has good musical sense to it even though it’s a tad repetitive. It has the feel of an anime song.

Oh no – Yuzu’s already cute by musical nature, and they have to go and make a ridiculously cute PV on top of that! Anyway, “Mamotte Agetai” is one of those ballads – the type that Yuzu does so well. I don’t think Yuzu could miss with a song like this – not once they got those strings going in the background. But really – a ballerina girl and her teddy bear companion/protector? They really didn’t pull any cuteness punches!

Thanks for the update and pointing out the issue with the Kimura Kaela album (I had only seen the Nov. 13th release on CD Japan and didn’t notice the other versions being released on October 30th). Glad to hear about the BUMP OF CHICKEN album. Of the three songs, the Yuzu song is easy listening and unimpeachable even though it’s generic – sweet vocals always win out. The other two weren’t my style especially in terms of the vocals.

No problem! Just to respond to the worry about the amount of tracks on the new Bump of Chicken album – I was a bit worried at first as well, but then I sat down and thought back a bit. Looking back it orbital period: it was a 17 track record that had 6 single songs going into it, with an intro/outro and 2 interludes also included. This left us with the exact same number of new full length tracks as their new album – 7. The question, I suppose, is whether the announced 13 tracks would prevent them from tacking on an intro and outro in addition to those, or whether they’d count an interlude as a track. I think we’ll just need to wait for the full tracklist to see exactly what we’re getting, but I still have quite high hopes for “RAY” as an album.

Good point about the short tracks – hadn’t thought of that. Well, if it’s 13 full tracks not including intro/outro/interlude, I guess it’s on par, though the ultimate verdict will come when we get a chance to listen to it.